It's better than the alternative

That is what my Grandma said to me when I made the mistake of whining about turning 30.  You think I would know better than to whine about 30 to an 83 year old woman.  Turning 30 is better than being dead.  I guess I still have lot of learning to do.

The birthday was, well, it was actually good.  I’m surprised because of all the crying I did about it beforehand.  I honestly believed that I wouldn’t be capable of doing anything today because I would be mourning the loss of my 20’s.  I guess I didn’t

My husband ended up working two overtime shifts today so I really didn’t see him at all, and while I am sad disappointed about it I don’t think that I will be when he receives the paycheck that all of this overtime is on.  Besides, I was barely even home so it wouldn’t have even mattered if he had only worked one overtime shift.  I’m babbling now. 

I ended up going over to my girlfriends house and asked her husband to try to fix either my door lock on  my car or my radio.  Both have been non-functional for over a year.  Her husband was only able to fix the door lock but he thinks he could probably fix the radio after he talks to a friend of his who actually installs stereos.

My girlfriend went with me to get my new tattoo.  This is the first time that I have ever had a tattoo specifically designed for me.  Usually I go into a shop and pick a piece of Flash off the walls or out of a book and have slight alterations made so that it doesn’t look like Flash.  I had gone into the shop on Monday afternoon to talk to someone about what I wanted and how I wanted to blend it into the tattoo that I already had on my arm.  In case you couldn’t tell, I really put thought into this one.  The guy looked at my already existing tattoo (a butterfly that I got when I turned 21) and told me he would touch it up and blend the new tattoo in with it so that it all flowed together.  I’m loving the outcome. 

It’s a little red, and a lot swollen.  Doing the butterfly hurt like hell because of the scar tissue, but if you had seen it before you would think that it was a completely different tattoo.  I absolutely love the way the stars came out.  The big one is a black and green nautical star and the smaller stars are multi-colored.  The guy did some pink to show motion.  I’ll post some more pictures once it’s healed and the colors are all set and everything.  I feel really good about this, but am worried that my mom will use this as an excuse to disown me.  Then again, if she can look at it as a whole instead of two separate pieces than I think I can fool her for awhile. 

The guy who did my tattoo was a little sick and twisted, but in a really good way.  He may have found it slightly unnerving that I didn’t whine or cry at all about the pain while he was doing the tattoo.  Apparently a lot of girls that he’s done work on need to keep taking breaks because they have no pain threshold.  I definitely like the work he did.  He even gave me a fun little nickname (Kitten) and shamelessly flirted with me.  He did have a kind of weird preoccupation with his wiener, but I naturally assume that most men do.  His wiener talk isn’t enough to keep from going back there though.  It takes a lot more than a guy talking about his member to embarrass or offend me.  Plus the proximity of this place to my home is wonderful, I could walk there if I felt so inclined.  The prices didn’t hurt either.  

In all I spent $200 for this experience.  I think that my new found happiness is totally worth the $200.   After the tattoo experience my girlfriend and I went on our bi-annual trip to Olive Garden for dinner (her birthday in January and mine obviously in June). 

So as we can see, it was a good day. 

It's my party

I’m turning 30 in a little less than a week now.  I’m not going to go on and on about how hard it’s been for me, because let’s face it, my problems are petty when compared to the problems of others.  Let me just say, that I would be much happier if this was 31 instead of 30 because at least then I would be over this daunting hump.

Anyway, my husband is a good guy who listens to me when I really wish he wouldn’t.

My sister in law (his sister) also turned 30 this year, back in February.  Her husband had thrown her a surprise party for this occasion.  I was jealous because the last time I had a birthday party I think I was turning one or two.  My birthday is at the beginning of summer when people tend to go out of town for vacations, so my friends were usually gone and there was no party to be had.  I’m also an only child so I never really knew what I was missing until I went to friends birthday parties.  It sucked a little to realize that I didn’t get to have something like that, but at the same time I was never prepared to have that much attention thrust upon me so I was thankful that I never had a party.  The point is though, that I told my husband that I was jealous. 

Back when we found out that my brother in law was throwing a party for my sister in law, the green eyed monster game out for a visit.  I wanted a party too dammit.  I’m turning 30, why should she have everything?  I should have mentioned that I would have liked to have been clued in on these details, because my husband managed to throw together a surprise party.  Damn him. 

Since my husband started his new job, I kind of stopped wondering about what was going on.  He had plausible excuses for everything.  He asked about my favorite colors (weird) but had a good reason for why he was doing so.  My girlfriend who is getting married a week from Friday called him at one point and left a message.  My wonderful husband who thought he had nothing to hide from me, was listening to his voice-mail messages on his speaker phone.  I heard the familiar phone number being recited by the voice-mail woman and then my girlfriends distinctive voice saying hello to my husband.  He immediately deleted the message without listening to it.  When I asked what she wanted, he looked at me and asked me how he should know.  I spent two hours saying he might know if he had listened to the message.  He finally called her back in front of me and told me it was because of the wedding, she hadn’t received our RSVP yet and wanted to know if we would be at the wedding.  Weird that she would call him instead of me, but we had gotten new cell phone numbers and maybe I transposed whose number was whose when I sent an email stating that we got new numbers.  Plausible. 

My hair dresser was determined to get me into the salon to get my hair cut and colored before Father’s Day.  Weird.  My mom was insistent that I come over on Father’s Day because my husband was working and her husband would be spending the day at a baseball card show.  Neither of these woman would relent in my wanting to get together on a different day.  I’m now incredibly grateful to my hairdresser, apparently she knew the shame I would feel at being photographed with about 2 inches of growth showing. 

What gave it away was seeing my girlfriend and her fiancee walking into the place where the party was being held.  She saw me, I saw her and she ran away from me.  Curious.  I then started to look at the cars in the parking lot, and asked my mom why my in laws van was there, and why my other girlfriends truck was there.  At that point I knew for certain what was going on.  My mom had to drag me into the building.  I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life, and this includes the time that I told my psychology teacher that I had to go to the bathroom because my tampon was leaking down my leg.

All in all it was sweet and it was nice to have all of my favorite people in one room.  I wish my one girlfriend would have kept her trap shut and not taken it upon herself to complain about my in laws (that is my right, and my right only), but all in all it was nice.  It felt awkward as hell to have that much attention on me, but it was nice to be able to deflect some of it to the father’s in the room. 

I’m also very grateful that the hangover that I acquired from the night of drinking tequila shots the night before decided to take leave and let me have a semi normal day, you know, free of the pounding headaches and queasy-ness.